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By ROYALL SNOW 



THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 




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IGDRASIL 



BY 



ROYALL SNOW 




Boston 

The Four Seas Company 
1921 



Copyright, 1921, by .\A ^ ^ t ^ 
The Four Seas Company \ 



For permission to reprint many of these poems, thanks are due 
to the editors of "The Stratford Journal," "Pagan," "Queen's 
Quarterly," "Youtli: Poetry of Today," "Contemporary Verse," 
"Slate" and "Art and Archaeology." 



0£C \9 W2> 



5CU654597 



The Four Seas Press 
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 






FOREWORD 

Poetry, like the tree Igdrasil, has deep, down-thrust- 
ing roots in the underlying kingdoms of the world, — 
roots that are watered by the Norn of the Past as well 
as by the Norns of the Present and the Future. In 
the long run this holds true of both the manner and 
substance of poetry, and it is a consciousness of that 
fact which has dictated the form of many of the poems 
in this volume, — even of those which may seem the 
most radical technically: the sonnets in free verse. 
Free verse, which has by now established itself as a 
legitimate form, has broken up the rhythms of English 
poetry which were becoming crystallized and mechan- 
ical. It has given a new vitality and a new flexibiUty. 
But, for the present, experiment has been pushed as 
far as it safely may be. It is time now to consolidate 
the gains. 

The rhythmical flexibility of free verse was pur- 
chased at the cost of melody (not a fundamental but 
certainly an embellishment of poetry) but there is no 
reason why, now that the liberty of rhythm has been 
attained, some of the old Tennysonian melody should 
not be restored. Rhyme, the most effective of the mel- 
odic devices, has never been forbidden by the theory 

[3] 



FOREWORD 

of free verse but in practice it has been very rare, and 
the recent use of it by more than one poet represents 
unadmitted, though wise, reaction. In certain poems 
of this volume, such as "Reverie at TwiHght" and 
"Passersby", the attempt to reconcile the elasticity of 
the nev^ and the melody of the old poetry is both 
conscious and confessed. 

The sonnets in free verse to which I previously 
alluded are another effort in the same direction. To 
those people who believe it is the fourteen pentameter 
lines following a certain rhyme scheme which make 
the sonnet, these poems will not be sonnets at all. To 
others who feel that a balancing of thought between 
the octave and sextet is the essence of the sonnet, 
they will seem legitimate. They may be explained as 
an attempt to retain the melodic value of the original 
while following out the free verse principle of flexible, 
rather than crystallized and meaningless form. 

RoYALL Snow 



[4] 



CONTENTS 

Page 
SONGS OF THE GOLD-TIPPED ARROW 

Cycle 9 

Evensong 10 

For One Girl 11 

Nightfall 12 

Cyprienne 13 

The Girl Gives Her First Kiss . . .14 

Rhapsody for a Girl 15 

The Same Place: Later 16 

Tragic Nocturne 17 

Reverie at Twilight 18 

FANTASTICA AND FACT 

An Old Old Story 23 

He Left Harvard for the War .... 25 

Concerning the Ego 26 

Beacon 27 

Summer Phantasy 28 

Concerning the Pyrotechnics of Emotion 29 

For the Madonna di Santa Chiara . . 30 

[5] 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Celibacy 31 

Truth 32 

Humourists 33 

Existence 34 

The Adventurer 35 

The Street Singer 36 

Humanity 37 

City Sketches 38 

Passersby 40 

In a Secluded Study 41 

Metamorphosis: City at Twilight . . 42 

Mellow Weather 43 

After the Storm : Early Evening ... 44 

November Night 45 

Quiet After Snowfall 46 

Night Rain 47 

City Streets 48 

Dead Fountains 49 

A Vision of Dead Ladies 50 

Salome and Herod 52 

Krishna's Flute 54 

Omar's Grave 56 

BEYOND REALITY 

The Journal of a Spiritual Pilgrimage . 59 
[6] 



SONGS OF THE GOLD-TIPPED ARROW 



CYCLE 

Twas centuries ago as twilight fell 

Like gauze across the pool 

That Radha bathed, 

With cool water clinging to her thighs 

And silver ripples murmuring. 

Twas centuries ago that Krishna watched 

Her draw her hair across her curving shoulder 

And wring it till there flowed 

A river of pearls. 

And ages long before 

Had Eve, with white body unclothed, 

Pressed through the woodbine 

Seeking out Adam in the mellowed shadows of the 

birch-groves 
To whisper of a new mysterious urging. 

Twas centuries ago . . . 



[9] 



EVENSONG 

Twilight is drooping like a veil 

Upon the curving breast of earth 

And beyond the trees is hanging, pale, 

A single star as liquid as a tear. 

The dusk is heavy with a melancholy 

Half-subdued, 

But sorrow cannot cloak me wholly- 

With you so near 

And both our far hearts dreaming . . . 

Our worded silence is unbroken 

As from out the saddened shadows 

Come the drifting ghosts of thoughts we might have 

spoken 
Had we dared, 

Of kisses that our lips have never shared. 
And so we sit with melancholy near 
But take pleasure in the touching of our hands. 
And the mingling of our breathing — soft and even — 
And the giving of a smile that understands ; 
And so we sit and so we watch the star 
That is hanging like a tear 
Against the cheek of heaven, 
And we wonder if behind her twilight veil 
Earth, too, is dreaming of some untold tale. 



[10] 



FOR ONE GIRL 

Old Love 

I shall twist a wreath 

Out of the wind-washed songs you sang 

And place it over the grave 

Where your memory lies buried. 

And then I shall go out into the world 

Pretending that all memory of you is gone, 

Shivered off into nothingness like a brittle moonbeam 

Shattered against a dark rock; 

But it will not avail 

For I shall still feel 

Little ghost-fingers clutching at my heart. 

Spoiliation 

I let you shake my soul 
(Like a flowering cherry tree) 
Scattering pink blossoms about you, 
And still I try to shade you 

With gaunt boughs. 
Now that you have taken all my flowers 
Can yoti not stop and smile 

Only a moment, — 
Instead of passing on so quickly to the next tree that 
blooms ? 



[u] 



NIGHTFALL 

On an emerald evening let me die 
With a single sapphire in the sky 
To mark the coming of the night. 

Then, from across enchanted water, 
Let the song of a prince's daughter 
Call my spirit from its flight 

To watch her comb her sunbeam hair 
With a comb of carven jade in the flare 
Of a wavering orange candlelight. 

Then shall I change to a breeze that lingers, 
Touching her lips with fragile fingers. 
As I pass content to the shadowed night. 



[12] 



CYPRIENNE 

Save for one clear thought of you 

My memory has been 

All blurred and shadow-tangled: 

Like some Chinese vale the evening dims 

Where only a lonely pagoda 

Glitters in the moonlight. 

And silence blew its lilied breath 

Upon the place for three whole years 

Until one night I heard the temple gong ring ou» 

With the pent melody of my desire; 

And then I knew I must go silently 

To worship in that flower-haunted place. 



[13] 



THE GIRL GIVES HER FIRST KISS 

They wandered up a lane 

Between the Hlacs in the twilight 

And at a white-paled gate she offered him her hand. 

Surprised, she found his arms about her 

And the dusk turned swiftly luminous. 

In her eyes was wonderment, 

Even as Eve, plucking the first flower, 

Marvelled at sweetness. 



[14] 



RHAPSODY FOR A GIRL 

Words, foamy-crested and plunging with passion, 

Flatten as wind-beaten waves 

Into a hurry of smooth silent water. 

Your kisses are the winds 

Beating down the crests of passionate words. 

They leave us rocking upon the slow swells of silence. 

Your eyes are caverns untroubled with sound: 

Caverns where reflections of stars 

Creep in to shiver against dark pools. 

In the hovering shapes that curl within them 

I see the phantom deeds of my future portrayed. 

We have journeyed beyond words; 

Yet I would murmur 

Of the peony- fragrance of your breasts. 

Of other things . . . 

Words flatten as wind-beaten waves 

Under the kisses of your lips. 



[IS] 



THE SAME PLACE: LATER 

{Sonnet in Free Verse) 

Upon the sharp sea rocks our pledge 

That love should never end was made, 

And then at our feet the swift winds played 

A thunderous music on the fanged reef-edge. 

And as we picked, that night, 

One steady star for symbol of a love that could not die. 

The wet cliffs back to the studded sky 

Shot a white flare of triumphant light. 

And now, alone and silent, I have come 
Here where we together used to lie : 
The ocean has no word for me, 
The granite rocks are dumb. 
Only a heavy star slides down the sky 
To vanish in the sea. 



Ii6] 



A TRAGIC NOCTURNE 

It is terrible 

Out in some moonlit garden 

To tread with dainty steps across red petals, 

Crushing their stains into the green grass. 

The suave grace 

Of winds is on the place : 

Slenderly indifferent over the trodden petals. 

But still more terrible it is 

To watch the moonlight on the face 

Of one you might have loved, 

And (studied in your carelessness) 

To laugh back flippant words 

Like those that kept yourself from loving . . . 

Then to take her arm, 

Stepping up a marble stair 

Into a flare of Chinese lanterns, music, and of pain! 

You would turn back ... 
And yet behind there He 
Only the trodden petals 
And the suave grace 
Of winds about the place. 



[17] 



REVERIE AT TWILIGHT 

The past is shadowy with mist 

And mellowed recollections fade; 

Memories may hauntingly persist 

As candles in the dusk, only to gutter out 

Finished as a melody that's played 

And the last chord echoed out . . . 

Echoed out till only hollow emptiness is left about ! 

Vivid sunlight and crimson ivy leaf 
In a flood of scarlet on gray stone chapel walls : 
With a gust of autumn wind the ivy falls 
And the dusk is frosted delicately with grief. 

And there are old desires like cold fires dying, 

The embers fade, no man remembers . . . 

In spring the moon-drenched wind goes sighing 

Past the lilac-scented trysting places 

Emptied of the old lovers, lo, these many years. 

The air is heavy with the sadness of forgotten faces 

And the wind seems moist with tears. 



And then the sounds of laughter come 
And a murmuring of words. 
Arm in arm two lovers pass : 

A moment of tinkling laughter, emptiness afterwards. 
Save for the idle shadows on the grass 
And the unseen ghosts that are dumb. 

[i8] 



Who can speak the names that chime 

Like the echos of a bell 

Recurring from an ancient time 

To break the wizard years slow spell ? 

What magic bring to these mellow places 

The long- forgotten faces? 

The heavy wind goes weeping 

Off to distant skies 

And the dark comes slowly creeping 

Around each deserted nest, 

Each colored autumn leaf. 

The twilight dies 

As unseen ghosts stir in a long unrest, 

And the night is frosted deUcately with grief. 



[19] 



FANTASTICA AND FACT 



AN OLD OLD STORY 

Pierre was lonely 

As the heart of some stone god 

Buried in a spulchral vault. 

He looked at the sun, mouldering 

In the grey mud of the skies 

And felt his own heart mouldering. 

La Patrie had called and he was answering 

With a mouldering heart ! 

With sick blood that dripped through his veins 

Like rain! 

At the station were sweethearts 

Saying good-bye, — and he was alone, 

Alone and drifting through a dreary slough of faces. 

Someone touched him; he turned. 

"Pierre!" she said ... 

And now he was riding north 
Through fields that stretched out 
Like the petals of a sun-flower. 
And there was a flower hidden near his heart: 
A flower he had stolen from her hair 
To be the mate of the kiss he had from her lips. 
There were flowers sprung 
Oiit of the mould in his heart: 
Flowers that stroked his soul with cool 
Petal-fingers. 
Pierre was glad; 

Smoke flowers burst out of the engine 
And wreathed the train 

[23] 



That swept him to the battle field. 
The road over which he marched 
Was the stem to a red flower 

That hummed with the distant roar of many bees. 
Pierre was glad 
And so with fierce joy- 
He tossed at the enemy, bouquets 
Of little flame flowers that vanished quickly 
From their smoking stem. 
Pierre carried her flower over his heart 
So that he was glad when the keen tongues 
Of the trumpets, 
Like the stamen of brazen lilies, 
Sounded, "Charge!'* . . . 

And Pierre still wore a smile, 
A little frozen-flower smile, 
As the sun sank like a wilting poppy. 
And the moon came up: a great white lily. 



[24] 



HE LEFT HARVARD FOR THE WAR 

Two autumns he had seen the ivy blush 
Against the gray stone chapel walls 

And twice in spring had watched the lilacs brush 
The red-brick college halls. 

Carelessly he loitered with the rest 
On Seaver's steps before the gong, 

Mingling with talk of lectures or a test 
Stray comment on a dance or song. 

And thus his final moment there was spent 

For Harvard taught his heart 
How it might always seem indifferent. 

Yet how might do its part; 

And Harvard still, with ever-open doors, 
As she has always done, will teach 

New men to chat of games and go to wars 
With the same old smile for each. 



[25] 



CONCERNING THE EGO 

I. The Pearl-Diver 

I plunge, 

A sharp streak of bronze, 

Through the sea-green chaos of my mind 

To discover deep-drowned pearls. 

II. On a Train 

My heart is a tiger lily 

Of fire blossoming; 

It holds up the wavering cup 

Of its golden eagerness 

To the stars 

Of an opening future. 

And yet I am burned with it ; 

Years will pass before I see again 

The tasselled cornfields of my native state. 



[26J 



BEACON 

Fierce night, white night, 

Burn like a beacon 

On the grey hills of memory ! 

Twist up the oaken boughs 

Of wrath. 

Feed the flames with them. 

Let the wind of new thoughts 

Beat the fire to brilliance, 

The edge of new friendship 

Slice the darkness with light. 

Fierce night, white night. 

Burn like a beacon 

On the grey hills of memory! 



[27] 



SUMMER PHANTASY 

Up over the rim of a world 

Heavy-lidded with heat 

In crystalline days by the seashore 

I walk arcaded verandahs 

And watch children playing below. 

A tanned little girl in pink and a boy in brown, 

Fresh from the foam-edged sands and glittering water, 

Play now with balloons 

On lawns about creamy hydrangeas; 

Down the curved street under the shade-trees 

The singing of a vender's horn trickles gladly, 

Calling a musical farewell 

To the gay-colored balloons left behind: 

Even as some day this song 

Shall wind back clearly to crystalline days 

When I am down over the rim of the world 

Heavy-lidded with heat. 



[28] 



CONCERNING THE PYROTECHNICS OF 
EMOTION 

(Sonnet in Free Verse) 

We have too much of dramatics 

And paraded passions that are lusty; 

Those old emotions are as dusty 

As long-deserted attics. 

And Melisandes with flowing hair 

Cascading from a balcony 

Seem all false to me, — 

Let us have healthy hearts and fresher air! 

You'll find your true emotion like a nun 

Walking somberly in gray; 

There will be no fine speeches spun, 

No grandiose display. 

A lad will press a young girl's hand 

And simplicity will make them grand. 



[29] 



FOR THE MADONNA DI SANTA CHIARA 

{Sonnet in Free Verse) 

Your girlish face is somberly impressed 

With an apocalyptic glory; 

It is enriched by faith in that great story 

Of God within your child made manifest. 

And yet the word religion cannot embrace 

All the loveliness that hangs about 

Your countenance devout 

For your beauty has a subtly human grace. 

Gentle Mary, on your face 

There is a lovely lingering light of wonderment 

For the child against your breast, 

And yet your cool, cool eyes bear not the trace 

Of kisses fierce and turbulent : 

They have the unplumbed cleanness of the uncaressed. 



[30] 



CELIBACY 

He had lived a life 

Virtuous as the coldness 

Of marble statues; 

Yet he went mad, 

Crying that he saw the ghost of a child 

Dancing upon the sword-points 

Of the fir-tree tops. 



[31] 



TRUTH 

She had told him that she did not love him. 

The laugh which he dropped scornfully at her feet 

Was brittle 

So that it snapped and cracked 

In many places. 

If she had lied, saying 

That her life was a broken flute without him, 

He would have kissed her. 

And believed. 



[32] 



HUMOURISTS 

Stalking down stone corridors, 

Armored as old knights 

Walking on crenelated walls 

In safety, 

Come the old gods 

Blurred in misty ages 

Of whispered talk ; 

And come also the new spectres : 

Evolution, Heredity, Fatalistic Psychology. 

Walking in safety on crenelated battlements 

They scatter laughter, crisp 

As the shatter of icicles, 

Over humanity. 

And the unwise wisemen 

Besiege the walls unavailingly. 

But somewhere on a country road a small boy 

Snubs his bare toes in the powdery dust, 

And watches a robin 

Pull worms from the fresh loam of a ploughed field. 

He grins too: 

So on whom is the joke? 



[33] 



EXISTENCE 

The notes 

Of the distant 

Piano 
Were as butterflies in a far field: 
One I caught 
As a thousand drifted palely away. 

And so with the world that whirls past : 
Rich lips in a subway ; a laugh 
That trickles through a dark theater; 
Black hair loose on white shoulders 
While a shade is being drawn. 

Meanwhile the dust rubs from the wings 
Of the butterfly I have caught 
And the others are flown. 



[34] 



THE ADVENTURER 

(And the rest of mankind) 

A flock of swallows whirl 
And swoop 

Hunting for their food 
In a dusk that gathers fast. 

While high above, 

To reach the island of a cloud, 

A hawk 

Goes swimming up the scarlet waters 

Of the setting sun. 



[35] 



THE STREET SINGER 

You have stumbled upon the edge of happiness 

And not been wise enough to see it, 

For your eyes are clouded 

And hunger undertones with bitterness your song. 

Only but watch yourself 

And the secret dreamers long have sought 

Is yours : 

The keeping of a song upon the lips 

In the search for bread. 



[36] 



HUMANITY 

An infinitely good-natured newfoundland puppy 

Perpetually stepping with clumsy feet 

On the edges of academic saucers 

And upsetting the milk over neat carpets ! 

A puppy continually circUng after its own tail 

And snapping at sunlight, 

Basking in hot streets, 

And getting its paw run over 

By elemental motor trucks. 

A poor devil of a puppy 
Staring, half -intelligent. 
Out of great hungry eyes. 



[37] 



CITY SKETCHES 

I. Flirtation 

Sluggishly the city 

Draws her head back of a fan of night mists 

To hide her yawns, while with her thousand eyes 

She coquettes lazily with the river. 

II. Lese Majeste 

Somewhere off in the distance 

A playful church spire sticks the full moon in the ribs, 
And sends it spluttering indignantly across the sky 
Like a stout burgher. 

III. Gossip 

One tall building. 

Its base entangled in a cluster of squatty ones 
Like a pencil stuck in a jar of peas, 
Stares superciliously about; 
The short buildings pretend scorn 
And whisper catty things with their rattling window- 
panes. 

IV. Vista 

Across the river 

The city makes a purple bas relief 

Against an orange west. 

[38] 



V. Grotesque 

They built that house of orange stucco 

And gave it greenish bhnds for eyeUds 

Either side the nose-like door. 

It's a hobgoblin, halloween face 

And it winks over the street at a church. 

Heigh-ho, but the spinster church 

Is very proper ! 

See her gather the trees 

Like skirts about her. 

And pretend to see only the stars ! 

VI. Corner Romance 

His soul was like a trolley car : 

Jolly, rumbling, 

And eminently practical. 

Hers was a httle pool of water that reflected the stars. 

And then one day his soul came clattering down the 

street 
And ran over hers. 
Now hers reflects the stars no more 
For his stirred up all the mud beneath. 



[39] 



PASSERSBY 

I saw Helen of Troy 

Walking along a dirty street. 

She wore shoddy clothes 

And broken shoes were on her feet 

While with her walked a sallow boy. 

The lyric seems to die in prose 

When, in place of Helen, Paris, and their noble kind, 

Simply a pimpled youth in dirty linen 

Goes with a girl to find 

A furnished room to sin in. 

And yet I still profess, 

However base this woman is, 

There was something of Helen with the other 

Hidden in that shoddy dress, 

For I saw this girl's dark eyes burn luminous 

With looking on her lover. 



[40] 



IN A SECLUDED STUDY 

The log fire 

Is infinitely tender. 

It combs the dark with smooth fingers of light, 

It tries to warm the cold night 

With soft kisses, 

And when the night does not respond 

It dies. 



[41] 



METAMORPHOSIS: CITY AT TWILIGHT 

Lethargic in the dusk the city lies 

As languid as a late and melting snow; 

Tired it is from varied enterprise 

And like a sleeping child is resting now. 

Its angles in the honied, hazy glow 

Are softened sweetly and the twilight's gray 

Comes as a lullaby to soothe it so 

To quiet from the uproar of the day. 

For metamorphosis has worked its way 

And changed, as half-lights mystically reveal. 

From noisy wrath and dirty disarray 

This giant, granite-fleshed and ribbed with steel 

It is, with hills to pillow its unrest. 

Become a waif asleep against a kindly breast. 



[42] 



MELLOW WEATHER 

The day is sweet 

As pears grown ripe in August sun 

And the Hght sHps honey-warm 

And fluid through the leaves. 

The mellowness of things long-done 

Through every gleam and shadow breathes, — 

That calmness of a world complete 

And full endowed with loveliness before 

Man's feet had crossed the threshold of Creation's 

door. 
And so all stir sinks down to rest 
In quiet at the touch of things 
Whose beauty, immemorial, has blest 
The kingdoms of a thousand kings. 
And trouble has no edge of pain 
For us, exiled from the eternal plane, 
Who now can glimpse its calm again. 



[43] 



AFTER THE STORM : EARLY EVENING 

(Sonnet in Free Verse) 

The storm past, I walk through the leaves 

That cling damply to my feet, 

And rejoice that nature is complete 

Without a mind that grieves 

For spring thus faded to an autumn's end. 

Nature is dead, and yet it seems 

Alive as vividly as many dreams: 

I vi^onder, is it a symbol or a friend? 

The trees are sharp black 

In the luminous air 

That follows after rain. 

Hearts too, I know, may sometimes after pain 

Find that a numbed quiet creeps back — 

Satin against a wound left bare. 



[44] 



NOVEMBER NIGHT 

(Sonnet in Free Verse) 

The night is ill at ease 

Spangled with its stars of flaky steel, 

Astir with winds that break and wheel 

Like flocks of birds above the trees. 

Then quiet brings a restless pause 

To brood, sullenly disturbed. 

Over an earth for ages curbed 

With the ponderous weight of ancient laws. 

The facile wind, the tinsel of the stars 

Are as the smile that covereth 

A sad heart at festivities. 

They are the glitter of the thin guitars 

Above the heavy orchestra of death, 

Above the frozen earth, the naked trees. 



[45] 



QUIET AFTER SNOWFALL 

The trees like spectre birds of paradise 

Pose in a world of gray and white, 

And the ghosts of faded shadows 

Lie upon the ground. 

Come, let us climb a hill together 

With the moon for lanthom 

And from the crest behold the world, 

A white illusion at our feet. 



[46] 



NIGHT RAIN 

Down comes the rain, creeping, afraid: 
Not with the shatter of lances 
Storms bring 
But only a long slinking. 

Under the wind trees bow down in fear 
And rows of beaten houses huddle together. 

Now they stand proud in undefeated courage; 
Off the slate roofs arc-Hght rays glance 
As from steel helmets. 

And trees shake proudly, indolently as the manes of 
coursers. 

» 
The rain creeps along slinking. 



[47] 



CITY STREETS 

Oh, I have kissed emptiness 

And loved this shadow that has lost its soul! 

I am sick with the despair of it. 

From resonance my heart has suddenly gone dead 
Like an echoing gong 
Touched by a cold finger. 

From this place are my friends gone, 

From this place I loved; 

And I see now that I loved its soul, 

Not the beautiful body . . . 

Like a woman this city stands 

Beautiful still, tangling 

The gems of stars in her elm-tresses 

And girdled with her jewelled streets. 

But now at the sight of her I sicken, 
I, who hunger for her lost soul. 



[48] 



DEAD FOUNTAINS 

Moonstains on a leafstrewn cloister walk 

And through the colonnades, dead fountains, rain-filled, 

Cast upward hollow echos of the stars. 

Moonlight tinselling a girl's black hair 

As a light step crinkles through the leaves: 

"Paolo? Paolo?" 

The dry rustlings of the leaves 

Blur out the whisperings of two, 

Wrap silk around the sound of kisses. 

Moonlight streaming in silver 
Along rapier blades . . . 
Heavy feet scatter leaves 
Into frightened leaps. 
Twice a curse! 
Then the moan of a man 
Lying, pale head in the light, 
Body in shadow. 

"Paolo, Paolo! Help!" 

The cry of a girl totters against the colonnades 

And falls across dead fountains 

That cast upward hollow echoes of the stars. 



[49] 



A VISION OF DEAD LADIES 

I rested on an evening, murmurous 

And heavy with the scent of heat-enshrouded flowers: 

A full rose broke and streamed 

Its petals, white across the grass, 

And gold-fish stirred beside me as I lay; 

To my eyes grown drowsy in the dark 

The touches of soft gold their moving made 

Seemed as flicks of light on rich brocade; 

The water whispers turned to voices murmuring. 

Helen came, 

And Cleopatra 

Hot summer-lipped and without shame, 

And white girls snowy as their native north, 

And earth brown maidens that the East brought forth 

In far Lahore, in Burma, or Sumatra. 

Each passed alone and each was singing 
A melody that softly swinging came to me. 

"Our vanished lips have found rebirth 
In the cur^dng of a rose. 
Our breasts have mellowed in the earth 
To clover feeding slender does. 

"But yet against our curving breasts 

We feel no baby's mouth; 

Our eager lips, all uncaressed 

By lovers, parch in a long love-drouth. 

[50] 



"Vain is the glory of the rose 
And vain the sweetness of the clover 
To her who dead no longer knows 
The sweetness of her lover." 

Brief glimpse of women glorious 

And then a couple passed 

Unconscious of me lying there. 

The silent singing was overcast 

By the murmur of their voices on the evening air; 

Dead queens slipped back into the dark abyss 

To the music of a living lover's kiss . . . 

Dead Guinevere and passion-pained Iseult, 

Sleep well within your grave! 

Your lovers came, your lovers gave 

Kisses to your red lips, 

Kisses to make your proud hearts exult 

In the starred nights of the dead years. 

Sleep well within your grave 

And leave the earth to those who follow after. 

To maidens bringing their red lips 

And soft laughter, 

Their kisses and their love-born tears 

To young men who await them in the moonlight. 

Eager as poised hawks, tender as the Angelus bell. 

Dead Guinevere, O Iseult of Ireland, 
I pay you homage. 
And say farewell. 

[51] 



SALOME AND HEROD 

A wavering flash of fire 

In heavy eyes, somber and dark, — 

Like to a spark 

In black forests 

Is that light in her eyes. 

The forest is kindled, the fire 

Weaves in a passionate bacchanal 

Around the black boles of the trees. 

Lips sultry with passion, cheeks pale, 

Salome dances. 

Through the mist of her hair and the veils 

Arms shift and glide 

As serpents of silver through water. 

Her body is rose seen through amber ; 

Her feet in their golden sandals 

Are white birds in the ripening wheat. 

Swift on the feast table Salome dances. 
Wine stains her feet ; 
Her ankles are tangled with orchids ; 
Cascading in jet on ruby-flushed shoulders 
Falls Salome's hair as she dances. 

A trumpet screams ; 
Salome leaps, then pauses 
Erect in the wreck of the feast : 
An ivory demon, triumphant. 
Awaiting her reward. 

[52] 



Blood upon silver, they bear it! 
Shaggy locks tangled, thick lips closed, 
In a pool of blood on a silver platter, 
The head of the prophet! 

From the coldness of death 

Lips that had cursed her in life 

Grow warm with Salome's kisses. 

Head flung back, hair like a thunder-cloud tumbling, 

She kisses the lips of the dead 

Blood wets her lips; it drops on her breast, 

A spatter of red on lilies. 

Then Herod cries out in his wrath and his shame. 

And his warriors come. 

And tumult breaks like a flame: 

A crash of shields, a cry of pain. 

Orchids and girl and blood and wine 

Are crushed together in a stain 

On the great white marble stair. 

Herod flees, the torches flare, 

Only the moon is left to stare. 



[53] 



KRISHNA'S FLUTE 

"Krishna bewilders and beguiles all hearts by the playing of 
his magic flute . . . He is the Pied Piper of the soul and the 
children of men who hear his piping follow him through the 
forests and away to perfect freedom." —AnandaK.Coomaraswamy. 

Beneath the moon there floats a tune 

Restless with immortal fire. 

Faded is the sound of laughter 

And the lips of men are mute 

For the night is mellow with a sung desire 

As Krishna passes with his flute . . . 

Some are wise and follow after. 



But haughty princes lie, indifferent 

In gardens fragrant with the scent 

Of flowers and of ripened fruit. 

The sound of Krishna's flute 

Is drowned in tambourines' swift ringing 

And girls shift as fire 

In a dance 

At which the princes, numb with satiate desire, 

Indolently glance. 

They grow weary of the singing; 

Their very jewels turn to flame 

And sear their flesh with pain . . . 



But the madness of immortal melodies 
Quivers like light about the trees 

[54] 



In those dim forests of the soul 
Where Krishna passes piping. 
The terror of the forest dies 
Beneath the song-Ht skies, 
And pilgrims find their feet are Hght 
On the pathways of the night. 



[55] 



OMAR'S GRAVE 

"My tomb shall be in a spot where the North wind may scatter 
roses over it." — Omar Khayyam. 

Omar, sick with melancholia 

And fumes of rose-drugged wine, 

Saw glory in the earth and prayed the grave 

Might have its chill made warm 

By broken roses. 

And the years dimmed as red reflections 

In a wine cup pale 

When candles gutter out, 

And scholars mourned at destiny 

In Omar dead. 

From Cairo far across Arabia to Nishapur 
There came one man in loneliness to grieve. 
And found the cool-handed wind of Persia shook 
Loose roses in a wreck of white and red 
Across the grill work of a garden wall 
On Omar's grave. 

"And lo," the old man said, 
"The rose of song has faded. 
The roses of the earth still fade." 



[56] 



BEYOND REALITY 



THE JOURNAL 
OF A SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE 

Brooding the impalpable great things 
Of life this Milo Venus stands, serene where kings 
Would tremble, and peering with her quiet eyes 
Into the hidden realm where true life lies. 
The empery of beauty and of thought. 
And so the wars which emperors have fought 
Have been but phantom to her eye that sees 
Beyond the flesh to the realities. 
Greece fell and Rome decayed; new nations built 
Upon their ruin as upon the silt 
Of deltaed rivers and of washing tides 
Grow to a vigorous life new countrysides. 
And all this time, amidst a world's decay, 
That Venus stood, aloof from all dismay 
As some cathedral spire which lifts its high 
And still unsullied beauty to the sky- 
While wars gut out the city down below, 
Its people perish, buildings fall, and the slow 
But universal grasses creep again 
Along the streets once trod to rock by men. 

And now I ask you why we write. Is Art, 

Abstracted, still so fine a thing our heart 

Torn burning out, is suited sacrifice 

To lay upon its altar? Is it for this, 

A word which we make God, that we shall tell 

Our intimate desires or plunge in Hell 

Tempering our souls to make more fine 

[59] 



The thought that beats pulsating through each line? 

It is not for that I write. I am afraid 

Of the great fingers of the dark which made 

This earth and blackly compass it. To die 

And then sweep out into the hollow sky 

On gusty winds and be engulfed in space 

Is terrible! I have not strength to face 

The empty distances of death alone 

And were I dead my soul, turned chill as stone, 

Would tremble back from them and linger here 

Enchained to earth by the bondage of its fear: 

A thing afraid of heaven and not of the earth. 

And so I seek in a remembered name rebirth — 

A life within my poems, for the spoken breath 

That brings one line to life will conquer death. 

Alas, like bronze in strength and rich as gold 

Must be that poem which can hope to hold 

Its lustre brilliant through the acid years. 

A test impossible! I see my fears 

Cloud around me like the ghosts that form in smoke : 

What hand that ever carved, what voice that spoke, 

Can so endure ! What madness is this in me 

To trust to verse like mine ! 

And then I turn and see 
This ageless Venus ! And I ask what is known 
Of the man that brought this woman from the stone 
To outlast empires. In Salamis he lived, 
Or on the isle where Ariadne grieved 
Her faithless Theseus perhaps, or else 

[60] 



Where crumbling Syracuse still melts 
Reflections in the blue Sicilian sea. 
Imperial Athens or some colony 
It may be cradled him and trained his eyes 
To beauty under clear Ionian skies. 

He must have loved some woman in those days 
He walked an earth all luminous with that haze 
Of gold which hangs above the hills in spring. 
And in the moonlight he would come and sing 
Outside her window. Burning with her kiss 
He would turn with sublimated artifice 
To work its magic in the virgin stone. 
So it must have been and yet no one 
Remembers it and not a book records 
His actions even in a few small words. 
His life is forgotten and his very name 
Is gone into that Time from which it came. 

And here am I who scribble lines and strive 

By them to keep my memory alive; 

And here (more subtly wrought, more nobly planned 

Than any work to which I have dared set hand) 

There stands this woman with her eyes that see 

Beyond my struggles to eternity. 

Serenity is hers, the calm that broods 

Austerely beautiful through sacramental moods; 

Yet he who touched her limbs with life is dead, 

Forgotten utterly in the long years that are fled. 

Oh thought as bitter to the lips as ashes are! 
That even he is gone, engulfed, a fallen star! 

[6i] 



Does life but blossom that a winter gale 
May come ironically and shake its frail 
Dead petals down upon the frosty ground? 
Is it for nothing philosophers propound 
Their truths and scientists make war upon 
The dark unknown battalions that surround 
Our living? For nothing saints have undergone 
Affliction? Great and small alike, all must 
Irrevocably be forgotten dust? 

Better to die at once and thus go out. 
To stand defiant on a cliff and shout 
Derision at those ancient gods who make 
Of life but a flame and tortured martyr-stake, 
Fling scorn to scorn, then leap into the foam 
And in the ocean find an endless home ! 

But there is still this Venus here to say 
With wordless lips that there may be today 
A world which seems a meaningless confusion, 
And yet tomorrow only the illusion 
Of her beauty lives. For she is not 
A thing of marble but illusion wrought 
In marble, and it is that which lives in her; 
All things but this have found a sepulchre. 
Dynasties may fall but beauty reigns 
In an eternal kingdom. And she retains 
Her beauty; — mangled, she is still serene 
For all the cataclysms she has seen. 

Then in this flux of life and death and chance 
There is at least in beauty permanence, 

[62] 



Secure although the tides flow in or out 

Eddying with the currents of our doubt. 

It is true we are forgotten and the shell 

Of us is swept to sea on a tidal swell, 

But what we have built of beauty in our heart 

May still endure and still exist apart. 

That is not us and yet it is the best 

Of us, and brings the wonder: can the rest 

(That sum of our peculiarities) 

Be nothing after all but a disease 

And breeder of unrest? Then better blend 

Outside of life with that which can transcend 

The hungry treachery of time, and merge, 

With self abandoned, in the palpitant surge 

Of that Beauty which to human eyes is known 

But by its symbols, like this Venus carved in stone. 

How near this Venus grows! She stood withdrawn 

Before from all my pettiness and on 

Serener things she looked, but now instead 

With quiet friendliness she bends her head 

To smile at me. What comfort there would be 

To creep up and rest against her knee 

Contented as a tired child at last 

Come home. Changed, this goddess of the past 

Is turned to woman and the one to lull 

Asleep the frightened child, as beautiful, 

She stands beside him for his surety 

That he may sleep but beauty will not cease to be. 



[63] 



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Treatment Date: Oct. 2009 

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